


Living in a Devil Town

by Neffectual



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Ia Cecil, M/M, Science, Smut, Spiders, Stop sign immunity, Tentacles, babble, eldritch abomination!Cecil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-22 23:49:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neffectual/pseuds/Neffectual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Night Vale is a little bit sentient, and a little bit fond of Cecil. It's weird to get civic awards for your boyfriend's orgasm.</p>
<p>I'm not allowed to use run on sentences in my writing at work, so this is full of all the ways to connect a sentence which I'm banned from during my weekdays.  Title from a Bright Eyes song.  Anything clever you notice probably came from the podcast itself, or from something else not mine.</p>
<p>For Lisa, who got me into this ridiculous fandom, and is now forced to read this and pretend she enjoyed it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living in a Devil Town

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lavellington](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavellington/gifts).



The thing about Night Vale is...  
Well, the thing about Night Vale is that...  
Look, it’s just, the thing about Night Vale is... it’s not exactly a town. It’s more sentient than that, and right now, Carlos thinks, it’s using all its sentience to try and get him laid.

 

Okay, so it doesn’t have to try very hard, Cecil is clearly very involved in these proceedings and rather unwilling to stop, even after they’ve knocked over a few beakers and the terrarium with the dancing spiders in it. Carlos isn’t worried, they’re everywhere these days, although those two had been pretty good at the foxtrot, which is difficult if you’ve got sixteen legs between you.

But Carlos isn’t sure he should be this involved, even with Cecil’s hand in his hair, the other on the lapel of his lab coat, and tugging, trying to find a bedroom in what is, sadly, a laboratory. Carlos is sure he’ll gather the breath to tell Cecil that any minute now. Any minute.

“Oh, perfect, perfect Carlos...” Cecil gasps, mouth leaving his to trail along his jaw and suckle at his neck, teeth slightly too long and sharp for nipping to be comfortable, “I’ve needed you since the first day I saw you.”

Flattery, obviously, and not something Carlos can return, because he hadn’t even seen Cecil for the first two weeks the man had been popping into the lab, too busy with experiments to turn round.

(“If you had said you had tentacles, I might have turned round sooner.” He’d said, once, caressing the purple-green waves of one of Cecil’s five prehensile tendrils.  
“But I did so enjoy the view of the back of you.” Cecil had purred back, and moved his tentacles slightly to be absolutely clear what he had meant.)

“I’ve wanted you since I woke up.” He says, instead, and then curses his stupid, scientific, literal brain, which makes him say things which are unintentionally hurtful, and then Cecil will stick his bottom lip out, and it will wobble, and Carlos will feel bad for days, not least because Hooded Figures will be wherever he is, and ignoring things which are plainly there gives him a migraine. Night Vale, after all, needs its voice, and looks after Cecil accordingly. 

It looks after Carlos, too, when he’s pleased Cecil, and it was really alarming after that first blowjob, to walk out to his car and find a message from the Sherriff’s Secret Police saying he had stop sign immunity for a year, when he knew he hadn’t reported anything. The condom taped to the back of the note was a bit forward, too.

 

Thankfully, Cecil seems to take this comment in the manner in which it is meant, because he laughs, a sound Carlos doesn’t think he will ever tire of hearing, a rich, full-throated sound, as befits his Radio Voice. They’re not a first times anymore, at least, Carlos doesn’t think they have any more first times to reach, but he could always be wrong, in Night Vale. For all he knows, they have to do something on top of a hill at midnight, in a thunderstorm, whilst praising the old gods.  
(“Don’t be stupid,” Cecil will say, when he asks, “That’s not for another year, we’ve got plenty of time to work on your ‘Ia’s before that.” Carlos will be oddly comforted by this.) 

The first time they had – Carlos blushingly calls it this, because though it embarrasses him, it makes Cecil flush a delicious violet – made love, the town had rained cherry blossom for an entire week, and quite a few children got lost in the drifts as the wind piled them up, and then Carlos had been called to City Hall for presentation of a plaque. It’s not one he’s going to put on the wall next to the Science Fair medals and his college diploma, though, because “Congratulations CARLOS, You Fucked Our Brains Out’ isn’t really for polite company, and anyway, it makes Cecil giggle and ask Carlos to check for brain leakage. 

Especially offensive is the way his name is written on in black marker, which is not only forbidden, but suggests they scribbled him in hastily after he made Cecil come twice in one night before his boyfriend got to return the favour. As if someone else might have come along and pleased Cecil just as much, which Cecil says is nonsense, but which Carlos, as the boy who got his lunch money stolen on a daily basis, and was lucky if he didn’t get a thump along with it, can’t help but hear as simply platitudes.

 

He makes the mistake, now, both of the half-undressed and intent on using a lab table as a makeshift bed, if nothing better materialises in the next five minutes (Well, you never know, in Night Vale.) of asking the question he’s been keeping quiet for months now.  
“What are you?”

It should sound wondrous, as if Cecil is a star, a new planet, the birth of a child, something breathtaking and horrible and wonderful all at once, but instead, it sounds like Carlos wants to get his killing jar out, and the pins and the corkboard. (Butterfly collecting isn’t exactly illegal in Night Vale, it’s just the butterflies are three foot wide and have a thirst for blood, so it’s best to keep your distance and drink to forget.) He doesn’t, he doesn’t, he loves Cecil, even though he struggles to say it, and blushes whenever he thinks it, but he would never do anything hurt Cecil, not on purpose, not deliberately like this.

“I’m... I thought we were past this.” Cecil says, quietly, and his tentacles droop, sliding back onto his skin where they lie inert, back to the tattoos which Carlos wants to trace with his tongue, especially now he knows how sensitive they are. His eyes slide from the deep black of the void to a normal greenish blue, and even though this is how he normally looks, Carlos can’t help but feel he somehow radiates disappointment.

“I’m not – I didn’t mean – ” You’re just not normal, Carlos wants to say, and I want to study you, I want to climb inside and see what makes you run, see how you work, pull you apart piece by piece and put you back exactly the same because I love you. But he’s a scientist, not a poet, and so he says none of these things.

“I suppose you’ve been more than accepting,” Cecil says, trying to push brightness into his tone, and falling flat, pulling himself from Carlos’ arms, which have gone limp, unable to cling, and he just watches as Cecil tries to find pieces of clothing which have landed around the lab, “I probably expected too much.”

No, Carlos thinks, no, no, you didn’t, I love you, please come back, please don’t go like this, like I think you’re not normal, just because you’re _not normal_ \- and Cecil turns, like he’s heard this, eyes already darkening.

“You... you mean it?” he asks, and Carlos quickly thanks any of the Old Ones who might be listening that his boyfriend has, occasionally, really fucking convenient flashes of telepathy.

“I do.” He says, softly, and Cecil flows back into his arms as if he never had any intentions of leaving, and is kissing him before he can say any other words.

 

They pull apart, sticky, naked, one of Cecil’s tentacles slipping out of Carlos, making both of them hiss, and Carlos looks at the wrecked lab

“If you’re going to have the tentacles out – ” he says, and Cecil tenses, so he swats him on the ass gently, just to take that look off his face, “Then we either need to take this home, or move anything breakable out of the way, I’m sure you’ve got glass embedded in places I... haven’t got the stamina to think about right now.”

“Nice save.” Cecil sasses him, sticking his forked tongue out, before letting it slide slowly back into his mouth, where it turns human before it hits his teeth, which look like perfectly ordinary human teeth now. Carlos gives him a look which is unbelievably fond, especially for someone who, aged thirteen, professed to love his mother, Albert Einstein, and the scientific method, “But you do... you don’t prefer me like this?”

Carlos takes a second to study Cecil, even though he knows he should be able to answer straight away. Does he like Cecil’s human body, slim and compact, pale and interesting, inked beyond belief? Yes. Does he like Cecil’s body when it takes on a purple hue, and the tattoos cease to be inert and writhe like maenads? Yes. Does he like dark eyes, black as the void itself, or clear blue-green which express emotion so strongly? Yes. Does he like a soft, human mouth for kissing, or a sharp-toothed, forked-tongued grin? Yes.

“I prefer you every way.” He says, honestly, unable to say anything else like this, curled together as they are, Cecil tucked under his chin and nearly purring with contentment, easy to pet, easy to hold, easy to – “I love you.”

Cecil’s smile is bright enough to cause the sun to rise three hours early, birds to burst into song, Steve Carlsberg’s tires to all go flat, and every beaker in Carlos’ lab to be full of champagne. Carlos just laughs, and toasts him with one. For all Cecil is, and for all he isn’t, he is wholly, irrevocably, perfectly the man that Carlos loves.


End file.
